of ttie
®nibergitp of i^ortf) Carolina
Collection of i^ortf) Caroliniana
Cf)ts; ibool^ toasi presienteb
UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL
llllllllllil
00032690909
This book must not
be token from the
Library building.
THIS TITLE
-IAS BEEN MICRO -ILMED
Form No. 471
FATHER
PRICE
Shortly before leaving for China
FATHER PRICE
OF MARYKNOLL
A SHORT SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF
REVEREND THOMAS FREDERICK PRICE
MIS SIGNER IN NORTH CAROLINA
CO-FOUNDER OF MARYKNOLL
MISSIONER IN CHINA
Compiled from the letters of his friends
by a priest of Maryknoll
PUBLISHED BY THE
CATHOLIC FOREIGN MISSION SOCIETY
OF AMERICA
MARYKNOLL : : : NEW YORK
Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D.
Censor of Books
^Tniprimatttr:
►^Patrick J. Hayes, D.D.
Archbishop of New York
December, 1922
Copyright, 1923, by the
Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America
MaryknoU, N.Y.
Printed in the United States of America
£)eliicateli to
Slesrsfft! IBetnatietU &ouftirou0,
€\}i\ti of tht 3^mmaculate Coiucption.
do
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The compiler wishes to acknowledge with
gratitude letters from
Reverend ^Michael A. Irwtn
Newton Grove, North Carolina
Reverend Willimi F. O'Brien
Durham, North Carolina
Reverend A. R. Freeman
Goldsboro, North Carolina
Reverend William B. Hannon
Asheville, North Carolina
;Miss Margaret Price
Wilmington, North Carolina
and others, who have supplied data for
this narrative.
PREFACE
Father Price, the subject of this little
book, would shrink at the idea of its pub-
lication. We who knew and loved him have
felt, however, that it is good to manifest to
others the light of his splendid faith and the
strength of his untiring zeal. We need the
spectacle of such souls as his, and only wish
that more material could have been gathered
and more of the words that fell from his
priestly lips preserved.
— James A. Walsh
Superior of Mary knoll
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTKR I
Early Days 3
CHAPTER II
North Carolina Mission 17
CHAPTER III
IM.VRYKNOLL ApOSTOLATE 45
CHAPTER IV
The Man of God 71
is
ILLUSTRATIONS
Father Price Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Alfred Lanier Price 4
Clarissa Bond Price 12
Father Price as a Seminarian 26
North Carolina Days 4o
St. Thomas' Church, Wilmington 54
The MaryknoU Mission Compound 66
St. Mary's Church, Goldsboro 78
Father Price's Grave 90
XI
FOREWORD
From "The Catholic Transcript," Hartford, Connecticut:
" Not since the passing of St. Francis
Xavier has an event of more striking import
to the Christian Church taken place in the
Far East, than that which occurred there
recently in the death of Reverend Thomas
F. Price, of the American Foreign Missions.
" Other missioners, some of whom won
the martyr's crown, have died at their posts
in the Orient, but they were representative
of older missionary movements, and their
deaths, however heroic, were only incidents
and episodes in the long history of an estab-
lished order. Father Price was a pioneer
and a harbinger of new and great things to
come.
" The work and the movement which he
represented Is In Its Infancy, but it is already
big and mighty with promise. ' The blood
of martyrs is the seed of the Church ': an-
tiquity has sent us this message — a message
xui
FOREWORD
which carries us back to the days of persecu-
tion, when heroes rushed to death in support
of the doctrines which they were sent to pro-
claim. It is a true and inspiring saying, one
of the sacred heritages of the Christian
Church.
"If the blood of the martyrs is fecund,
why not the labors, the anxious vigils, the
sacrifices, and the moral heroism of those
who leave all to go forth to proclaim the
gospel of the Crucified? Are not all these
things, and the hidden things of the apos-
tle's spirit, a source of divine fecundity? It
must be so, for with God, and before His
tribunal, nothing is lost, and ^ to those who
love God all things work together for
good.'
" As the ashes of this devoted apostle be-
come compounded with the dust of China,
the missioners of Maryknoll will feel that
they have a special claim to the soil of the
Orient. The seeds of a new apostolate are
planted there — the seed from which an
abundant soul-harvest is to follow.
xiv
FOREWORD
" The story of the life of this apostle is
briefly told. It was a life wholly spent in
the conquest of souls. He was a good man,
absolutely devoted to the regeneration of his
fellows, a man of mortification and of high
and serene converse with Heaven, one of
the most austere and self-effacing priests
that have ever illustrated the clerical body
of the United States. If there is a crown
for heroic sacrifice, and if the voice of the
apostle has a peculiar potency, MaryknoU
has an irresistible intercessor before the
Throne of Grace."
XV
V
EARLY DAYS
FATHER PRICE
OF MARYKNOLL
EARLY DATS
1^ EVEREND THOMAS FREDER-
Jl^ ICK price, the fifth son of Alfred
Lanier Price and Clarissa Bond Price, was
born on August 19, i860. Most of his an-
cestors were among the early English immi-
grants who settled in North Carolina, but
there was also a trace of Irish blood in the
family, from an ancestor named Brady.
The Bonds and the Prices are well-respected
families living in the eastern part of the
state, the home of the family on the ma-
ternal side being near Bath, the oldest town
in North Carolina. One member of this
family was an officer in the Revolution.
Mr. Alfred Lanier Price was editor for
a time of a newspaper in Washington, Dis-
trict of Columbia. Later he became well-
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
known as the able editor of the Wilmington
Daily Journal, the first daily paper in the
state, published in Wilmington, North Car-
olina, from 1848 to 1872. Mr. Price, like
all the other members of the Price family,
was an Episcopalian, but shortly before his
death, moved by the good example of his
devout wife and his children, he embraced
the true Faith.
Miss Clara Bond was converted from
Methodism when eighteen years of age. For
a long time she had been attracted to the
Catholic Faith but had found our devotion
to the Blessed Virgin a real stumbling block
to her acceptance. God took pity on her
honest fears and gave her the grace, not only
of belief, but also of most devoted love for
our Holy Mother, — a love that she in turn
kindled in the hearts of her children and that
found its most ardent expression in the life
of Father Price. Because of her conversion,
Miss Bond was compelled to leave home, her
father disinheriting her. She was also pre-
vented by the same indignant parent from
4
ALFRED LAMER PRICE. FATHER OF
FATHER PRICE
EARLT DATS
entering a convent in Charleston, where she
wished to prepare for the religious life. It
seems to have been God's design that she
should enter the married state instead, for
three of her children consecrated themselves
to God, her two oldest daughters becoming
nuns and one son a priest.
Sent away from her father's house, Miss
Bond moved to Washington, a thriving town
on the Pamlico River a few miles above her
mother's home, and there took up her
residence with Doctor Gallagher's family.
Doctor Gallagher had come from Phila-
delphia and his was one of the two or three
devout Catholic families then living in
Washington. It was in this city that Miss
Bond met and later married Mr. Price.
Shortly after their marriage they moved to
Wilmington, which became their permanent
residence.
God blessed the couple with ten children,
five boys and five girls. The two oldest
daughters became religious in the commu-
nity of Our Lady of Mercy, founded by
5
FATHER PRICE OF MARY KNOLL
Bishop England, the first Bishop of Charles-
ton. One of the religious, Sister Mary
Catherine, is still living at the mother-house
in Belmont j the other, Sister Agnes, died
while young. Sister Catherine is one of
the oldest members of the community,
but she is still noted for her zeal and her
great willingness to work for God's poor.
In gratitude for his hospitality when she
sorely needed it, and mindful of the impres-
sions she had received from the edifying
lives of Doctor Thomas Frederick Gal-
lagher and his devoted wife, Mrs. Price
wished one of her children to be named
after him. Accordingly the name of Thomas
Frederick was given to Father Price, in
memory of the conscientious physician who
preached the Faith by living the life of a
practical apostle in the midst of thousands of
our separated brethren, when the open pro-
fession of the Catholic Faith by a gentleman
in a public position meant not only the loss
of much desirable patronage, but also social
ostracism.
6
EARLT DATS
Mrs. Price is remembered in Wilmington
as a very modest, devout, and charitable
woman. The venerable Monsignor Mackin,
of Washington, bears witness to this state-
ment, for on one occasion when, as a young
lad, he entered a Catholic church in Wil-
mington and knelt before the Blessed Sacra-
ment in prayer and adoration, he was very
much edified by the deep reverence and
gracious modesty of a lady who was fixing
the altar. He afterwards learned that this
was Mrs. Price. By those who knew her,
she was regarded as a saint. She spent much
time in prayer, and all the rest of it in good
works. She asked God to give her children
trials to perfect them, to let them have their
purgatory on this earth, and to take them
out of life if they should be in danger of
losing their souls, — if such were His Holy
Will.
In the ages of faith, good Catholic mothers
prayed and promised God that, if He blessed
them with offspring, and their offspring were
acceptable to Him, they would only too
7
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
gladly consecrate them to His service. So
Mrs. Price prayed, and no doubt the prayers
and sacrifices of this saintly mother obtained
from God the priceless vocation vouchsafed
to her son. Thomas Frederick Price never
forgot the early training he received from
his mother. The seed of piety that she
planted gave forth an early shoot and its
growth was ever fostered by the serious,
prayerful lad. Father Mark Gross, whose
litany of good works and charities to God's
poor is still said by the tried and faithful
Catholics scattered over the Carolina mis-
sions, one day asked young Thomas Fred-
erick if he intended studying for the priest-
hood.
" Yes, Father," was the immediate reply.
*^ Then, Thomas," said the holy and
zealous missioner, " you should begin say-
ing daily five Our Fathers and five Hail
Marys to become a good priest."
To this young Thomas — more often
called by his second name — replied, in the
innocence that bespoke the mother's whole-
8
EARLY DATS
some influence on the heart of her son,
" Father, I have done that for a long time."
Father Price, when a boy, was a quiet little
fellow. His sister Mary says: " Sometimes
I can still see dear little Freddie, with his
little white head and his sweet little face 5
quiet and unobtrusive in his manner, obedi-
ent and polite. When at home, he was
always reading." And it seems that youth-
ful Fred's favorite attitude while reading
was " on his back."
He never attended secular schools, but be-
gan at a little Catholic school taught by his
two older sisters, Mary and Margaret, who
later became Sisters Catherine and Agnes of
the Mercy Convent. After his sisters gave
up their school, Frederick attended a boys'
school taught by the priests in the basement
of the church. When he was about fifteen
years of age, he resolved to go to Baltimore
to be educated for the priesthood.
It is of faith, that God's providential care
is over all but it is in a special manner over
those who have served Him from their
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
youth. This providential care was early
manifested in the life of young Frederick
Price. On Saturday, September i6, 1876,
he sailed from Wilmington, on the steamer
Rebecca Clyde, for Baltimore. After a very
stormy night, the ship was wrecked off Ocra-
coke Inlet, Cape Hatteras. The captain,
mate, and nearly all the crew were lost.
Frederick Price, with some others, clung to
the wreck until every vestige disappeared.
He was not able to swim and death seemed
imminent. As he sank in the sea, he prom-
ised the Blessed Virgin that if his life were
spared he would devote every moment and
every action of it to her.
At once he seemed lifted up, and as he
rose to the surface he grasped a spar that
floated near. Another survivor grasped the
other end of it and began to curse most hor-
ribly. He was ordered to stop and to thank
God for the chance to escape. Clinging to
the plank, the two drifted for several hours.
Then, when almost overcome with exhaus-
tion, they were picked up. Young Price was
ID
EARLY DATS
believed to be dead, but restoratives brought
him to, and he was able the next day to re-
turn to Wilmington and his family. The
Star of the Sea, so fervently addressed in that
hour of anguish, had come to the rescue of
her loving son who, she knew, was to culti-
vate in his own soul and to propagate in the
hearts of many others an especial devotion
to her Immaculate Conception.
Owing to the consequences of a fever that
followed upon the exposure and exhaustion,
Frederick Price was unable to attend college
at once. However, in February of the fol-
lowing year, he began his preparatory studies
at St. Charles' College, Ellicott City, Mary-
land, where he continued as a student until
his graduation in 1881. During those years
financial hardships fell upon the family and
they had to face many privations j but the
brave and devoted mother made every sacri-
fice that her son might continue his prepara-
tion for the priesthood.
Shortly before receiving the subdiaconate,
as a result of illness Frederick Price became
II
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
deaf and he entertained great fears that this
affliction would bar him from the priesthood.
He immediately made a novena to the
Blessed Virgin, and at its close his deafness
left him, never again to return.
On September 12, 1881, he entered St.
Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, for the study
of philosophy, scripture, and theology. On
M^y 3O5 i^^ij 1^^ received subdeaconship
from the Most Reverend James Gibbons,
D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, who, as a
young priest, had labored among the people
of the Carolinas and whose Mass Frederick
Price had often served in his native town of
Wilmington.
Meantime, however, his mother's health
had been failing. Although it had been her
dearest wish and her constant prayer that she
should live to see her son ascend the altar,
God ordained otherwise, for she died in
August, 1885. There is good reason to be-
lieve that she quickly passed into the realm
of the blessed, there to be nearer her priestly
son, and more powerful in her prayers for
12
CLARISSA BOXD PRICE, MOTHER OF
FATHER PRICE
EARLT DATS
him, than she could ever have been on earth.
Theirs was the communion of the saints, in-
tensitied in a mutual and absolute devotion
to the Immaculate Conception.
That her intercession availed much before
the throne of God can be gathered from the
following incidents. Father Moore, Mrs.
Price's pastor and a very holy man, had be-
come partially paralyzed and blind, so that
he could no longer read Mass but had to con-
tent himself reciting the prayers he knew by
heart. Shortly before her death, he said to
her: " Mrs. Price, you will soon be with
Almighty God, and when you see Him I
want you to ask Him to give me my eyesight
so that I may be able to read the Holy
Masses." The morning after she died, he
opened the Missal and read the Mass for the
day. He then went to the family and told
them not to grieve for Mrs. Price, as she was
with God. Not long afterwards, Mrs. Price's
little grandson, eight years old, was at Mass
with his mother. Suddenly he screamed and
fainted and had to be taken out of the church.
13
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
On becoming conscious he exclaimed, " O
Mamma, I saw Grandma! She was sitting
over the high altar, and a man sitting on one
side and a beautiful lady on the other side,
all dressed in spangles. And, O Mamma,
Grandma was so pretty! " Pope Pius IX,
through the venerable and learned Doctor
Corcoran, pronounced the Price family,
" the holy family."
On December 19, 1885, Frederick Price
received deaconship from Archbishop Gib-
bons. The following summer he returned to
his native city, Wilmington, and on June 30,
1886, was ordained by the Right Reverend
H. P. Northrop, D.D., Vicar-Apostolic of
North Carolina. Two other candidates were
ordained at the same time. Father Price was
the first North Carolinian to become a priest.
H
II
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
II
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
^^nHE new priest was not long blessed
^^y with the privileges of curacy. The
pastor. Father Patrick Moore, having been
given a vacation to visit his old home in
Ireland that summer, Father Price was left
in charge of the parish during his absence,
and on his return was assigned to work in
the rural districts. His early missionary
days were spent over the whole eastern
section of the state, east of Raleigh and
north of Wilmington, a district of about
three hundred square miles. He was once
introduced in St. Mary's Seminary, Balti-
more, by Abbe Magnien, in this way:
" Gentlemen, behold the secular clergy of
North Carolina! "
In 1888, Father Price was placed in charge
of St. Paul's Church, New Bern, North Caro-
lina, and its seventeen or more attached mis-
sions. Included in these towns was Golds-
17
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
boro, where there was no church but an
excellent and valuable lot purchased by his
predecessor. Reverend J. J. Reilly. Father
Price at once set about the difficult task of
building a church.
Those were days of intense prejudice
against everything Catholic, and he had only
a handful of Catholics to assist him, yet he
inaugurated a fair. His personality soon won
many friends for the cause so close to his
heart, especially among the Jewish citizens
of Goldsboro, who generously supported
him. In fact, the Jewish workers so out-
numbered the Catholics that a prominent
Hebrew gentleman advanced the question:
" Is this a Jew fair or a Catholic fair? " The
enterprise netted the truly phenomenal sum
of $1600. Friends in Philadelphia also
came to Father Price's assistance, so that he
was able to erect his church, — an attractive
building, for years one of the few Catholic
churches made of brick in North Carolina.
At the time, Father Price was oflFered a
marble altar for the Goldsboro church by a
18
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
Northern lady, on the condition that she be
permitted to name the church. Father Price
announced that he could not allow any one
to name his first church. This was his op-
portunity to express his great devotion to the
Mother of God, and he called it St. Mary^s,
Some of the hardships endured on the
pioneer missions of North Carolina are re-
vealed by the following facts. For years
Father Price was wont to go by rail from
Goldsboro to Mount Olive, where he would
be met by a zealous lay helper, Mordecai
Jones, a convert to the Faith, who would
drive Father Price twenty-one miles to New-
ton Grove, where the two would remain
from Saturday until Wednesday. Then they
would travel by buggy twenty-seven miles to
the country church of The Good Shepherd,
situated in the wilds of Duplin County. This
church had been dedicated by Bishop Gib-
bons with Father Price acting as altar boy
at the ceremony.
After a two days' stay, Mordecai Jones'
buggy would carry Father Price forty miles'
19
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
distance to Chinquapin, where there was the
nucleus of a Catholic settlement. At that
point Father Price placed a lay teacher and
built a small school. He used to stay with a
poor family who occupied a two-room house
made of logs plastered together with mud.
In this cabin Father Price slept on sheepskins
in place of a mattress. He celebrated Mass
in the school.
Mordecai Jones relates that those long
trips were made in mud and ice, and that at
times both Father Price and himself suffered
intense pain from the cold and inclement
weather. On one occasion Father Price sug-
gested the recitation of the rosary for the in-
tention that they might escape freezing.
From Chinquapin, Mordecai would drive
Father Price fifteen miles to a railroad sta-
tion, from which he, Mordecai, would travel
the long distance to his home near the Church
of the Good Shepherd alone.
Later on Father Price purchased a horse,
which he left at Goldsboro and which he
used in traveling the twenty-seven miles to
20
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
Newton Grove. This horse bore the name
of Nancy Hanks. It was a difficult matter
to start Nancy y and at times equally difficult
to stop her. Father Price was accustomed to
make purchases in Goldsboro for his Newton
Grove parishioners, who lived eighteen miles
from the nearest town, — Newton Grove it-
self being not a town but a thickly settled
country section. Once he left Goldsboro
with a large cargo, — coffee, sugar, calico,
and a supply of church vestments. Father
Price mounted the buggy and resorted to his
usual feat of starting Nancy by having a by-
stander throw sand in her mouth. She started
at a terrific pace, and continued the entire
journey with ugly vengeance. Finally,
Father Price, the buggy, and Nancy Hanks
reached Newton Grove. All else had been
lost along the road, — a dozen bottles of
altar wine, a cope and other vestments, not
to mention the merchandise he had essayed
to deliver.
Father Price in those days was devoted,
tireless, energetic, gay, mortified, and a deep
21
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
lover of holy poverty. He cared nothing
for his own comfort, and had the stomach of
a goat and a constitution of iron. He loved
the poor and lowly. He catechised every-
where, followed up his neophytes in corn and
cotton fields, instructed under trees, at fence
corners, and on tree stumps, ate the coarsest
of food with laughing relish, took a deep in-
terest in the negroes, and always had the
most contagious gaiety.
He understood Southern religious preju-
dices and limitations better, perhaps, than any
other priest in America, and was respected by
the most crude backwoodsmen as well as by
the better class, although they had otherwise
no use for anything Catholic. He made
allowance for their prejudices and never re-
sented their convictions about the Faith.
They thought him a good man, although a
Catholic, and felt that there was nothing
stilted about him. They observed his care-
less and poor dress, and saw that he was not
particular as to the size and shape of the hat
he wore or the quality of his shoes, or
22
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
bothered whether his trousers were of the
required length and the latest mode. They
agreed with him that razorback bacon with
plenty of juice, gritty cornbread made with
water, and coffee, were fit for anyone on
earth. He entered into the affairs of hogs,
corn, and cotton, as one to the manner born,
and they realized that " Mr. Priest " was a
" tar heel " like themselves. He was criti-
cised for one fault only, — " he drove his
horse too fast," so they said, and tore down
the roads like a wild man, oblivious of the
wonder of the slow-going country folk. He
was after souls and wanted to get there.
It was often asserted by the backwoods
congregations that " Priest Price " verily
believed what he preached. There was noth-
ing of the fashionable preacher about him.
He was not eloquent and never went outside
the themes of the plain Gospel to try to
captivate the fancy of his audience. His
language was grave and not dramatic, but it
touched the thought of others, and his simple
and poor life flashed on his hearers. They
23
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
reckoned him a " powerful preacher," and,
when they were in the mood, he preached
as long as they wished, which was much over
an hour. " Christ and Him Crucified " were
his frequent subjects of inspiration, and
something generous, honest, and sincere
seemed to radiate from him. The most illit-
erate white or black people understood him.
He impressed them with the ringing truths
of eternal life that came from his lips. He
gave them plenty to think about, and they
did not forget the divine message when he
had finished.
Besides the church at Goldsboro, Father
Price built also those at Halifax and Naz-
areth, and enlarged the church at Newton
Grove. While exercising the nominal rec-
torship of the Sacred Heart Church, Raleigh,
to which he was appointed in 1895, he spent
his time in giving missions to non-Catholics
throughout the state, and in working up plans
for his projected missionary activity.*
* The first aid Father Price obtained ab externo in
carrying on these missions to non-Catholics in the Caro-
24
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
Recognizing the value of the apostolate of
the press, Father Price decided that the writ-
ten should supplement the oral word, and
that an apologetic magazine would be a
most effective means of removing doubt,
superstition, and ignorance j developing a
healthy curiosity about the Faith j securing
a proper respect for the Catholic Church and
its adherents J and so paving the way for con-
versions. The magazine would prepare the
field j then missioners should go about, teach-
ing, preaching, doing good, meeting the
people personally, defending the Faith, and
explaining its doctrines to the individual.
The two-fold combination of a magazine
that would reach all, and missioners who
would reach each one, seemed to Father
Price not only a logical, but the only, solution
of the peculiar problem offered by the South.
Burning with zeal for souls, eager to be
about his Father's business, his enthusiasm
was infectious and he had no difficulty secur-
llnas was from the Apostolic Mission House at the Catho-
lic University, Washington.
25
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
ing permission to make the first steps in his
apostolic program.
Accordingly, the magazine, Truth, was
started. At first it was printed from a
Raleigh printery, but later the editor got
an old printing machine and did the work,
with poor help, in the kitchen of the rectory.
The congregation used to help by donations,
folding the magazine, securing subscriptions,
and so forth. Often, like Bishop England,
he had to do most of the labor connected
with the publication, save that he did not ac-
tually set the type, as the great John of
Charleston had to do. As the time for
publication approached. Father Price could
always be seen with bundles of manuscripts
bulging from his coat-pockets as he raced to
catch a train. He was never a minute ahead
for a train, but somehow he always used to
make it. Many a time he told how he
used to catch trains in the country, between
stations. He would run to the top of a hill
near the track, and whistle and yell to the
engineer. The engineer would bring the
26
FATHER PRICE AS A SEMIXARIAX
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
train to a halt and wait for Father Price to
get aboard. Then " the bell would whistle
and off she'd go again."
Father Price corrected his manuscript and
jotted down his ideas on trains, in the dim
waiting-rooms of country stations, or by the
faint and flickering light of an ill-smelling
lamp in some shack on the missions. He
never made a cent on the paper, save by its
indirect appeal, and he sent free copies
broadcast to enlighten the ignorant and con-
vert the prejudiced. Generous souls who
knew his unselfish aims usually came to the
rescue and helped to pay the printing bills.
It is undisputed that this journal brought
light and faith into many isolated non-
Catholic homes in the South and West, and
had Father Price restricted his apostolic zeal
to Truth alone, he would have served his
generation well.
The second step in the apostolic program
was more difficult, namely, the supplying of
missioners who would cultivate the ground
prepared by the press. Because of constant
27
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
and ever-increasing demands in other sec-
tions of the country, it was obvious that no
sufficient supply of priests could be secured
from without the state. In the state, vo-
cations were pitifully insufficient. After much
thought and prayer, Father Price conceived
the plan of establishing a Catholic orphan-
age and boys' school, where some day voca-
tions might be found and developed.
The required permission being secured,
the next steps were to determine the location
and to secure the funds for the apostolic
nursery. In 1897, after considering many
sites. Father Price bought a large tract of
land at the place now called Nazarethy and
on Rosary Sunday, October, 1899, he took
possession. The Sisters of Mercy from Bel-
mont were his coadjutors in this establish-
ment of an orphan asylum, — the first mis-
sionary work undertaken at that point.
The beginnings at Nazareth were very
humble. The buildings were plain wooden
farm houses and the furnishings were ex-
tremely simple. The orphan boys were the
28
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
most abject specimens imaginable, but they
were better off under the care of Sister Cath-
erine Price and her devoted helpers than
they would have been in their own natural
surroundings. Things were very poor at
Nazareth in its beginning, but love reigned.
Father Price looked seedy, and the poor
sisters' black habits were tattered and torn
and patched, and stained with spots which
would not come out. Their hands were red,
and their knuckles and fingers enlarged with
labor, but joy and prayer were in the air and
happiness reigned supreme.
From those early days — open, no doubt,
to criticism — great and difficult good has
come. A magnificent tract of land had
been secured, a beginning was made. The
housing was almost as poor as at Bethlehem ^
but the splendid orphan asylum for boys that
the Vicariate now has at Nazareth, with its
English Gothic brick buildings and its tenant
village scattered about, is the natural fruition
of that work which Father Price started
there twenty-three years ago.
29
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
In June, 1900, Father Price received his
first assistant, in the person of Reverend
Michael A. Irwin, just ordained. Father
Irwin (now Pastor of Newton Grove, North
Carolina) relates that he found at Nazareth
a marvelous collection of the most pitiful
children he had ever seen: puny, malformed,
wretched little children, the poorest of the
poor. Father Price, he said, had a " nose
*
for the poor, a talent for finding the most
needy." If God exalts the humble, what is
now the glory of him who " emptied him-
self " to become the spiritual father of that
pitiful brood that he managed, with smiling
gaiety, to gather to himself on the hills of
Nazareth?
The boys at Nazareth, after school hours,
folded and cut the leaves of the magazine,
Truthy which was printed there for several
years.
In 1 90 1 Father Price acquired a fine prop-
erty on the other side of the road, and at
once set about gathering funds for the erec-
tion of a church and what he planned to be
30
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
the home of his Apostolate. For two years
he was absent a great part of the time, so-
liciting funds in the North, where he met
with marked success because of the universal
admiration that his character and his cause
commanded. The priests' house, or Regina
Apostolorum, as it was called, was built in
the winter of 1 901— 1902, and the church
about six months later. Both structures were
of brick. The church, of a fine design in
" country Gothic," still stands, but the Regina
Apostolorum, not satisfactory in lay-out, was
destroyed by fire in the spring of 1906.
Father Price at once began to build the fine
fire-proof edifice that housed the Apostolate
until his departure from North Carolina,
and that now serves as a convent and orphan
asylum.
In February, 1901, Father Price re-
ceived his second assistant. Reverend Wil-
liam F. O'Brien (later pastor of the Im-
maculate Conception Church at Durham,
North Carolina). Father O'Brien found in
the cornerstone of the priests' house, when
31
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
it was burned in 1906, the following letter,
which Father Price had thought would not
be read for many years:
This stone has been blessed by the Reverend
Thomas F. Price, on April 21, 1902. The Right
Reverend Leo Haid, O.S.B., D.D., was to have
blessed it yesterday v^^hen blessing the cornerstone
of the church, but omitted it through fatigue.
All the children of the orphanage, thirty-tw^o in
number, participated, singing hymns, etc., as well
as Fathers O'Brien, Irwin, and Thomas Staple-
ton. This building begins the manifestation of
a design for a religious order which has been held
through many years of toil, sacrifice, and prayer.
If God blesses it to succeed (and may it fail if
the Divine Majesty so desires!), it will cover
every diocese of the globe.
This building is consecrated to the Queen of
the Apostles, in consequence of a vow made by the
writer to our loved Blessed Mother, that if it come
to success it would be hers — named after her.
May Jesus, the sweetest love of our hearts, be
praised, adored, and forever blessed! May our
loved Mother be praised and blessed forever!
T. F. Price
32
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
Finally, with over two score of neophytes
(the most promising of the orphans, and
other students) and the two assistant priests,
Fathers Irwin and O'Brien, community life
of the Apostolate began. There was an im-
mense deal of fervor about the place, and a
strict monastic rule was observed for several
years, everything being done on the stroke
of the bell from five to nine, and no idle
bread being eaten.
In those crowded years numbers of mis-
sions were given to the country people, fre-
quently for two weeks at a time, and the
chapels were well-crowded by the non-
Catholics. No work was ever more apos-
tolic! Of the twenty-five or thirty young
disciples at Nazareth many have become
holy and fervent priests in other parts of the
United States. They were confirmed in
their apostolic zeal at Nazareth.
Seminarians would come down in the sum-
mer from Baltimore and Dunwoodie and do
valiant work around the country. The
chapels would be veritable spiritual camps,
33
FATHER PRICE OF MARY KNOLL
with pots, pans and cooking paraphernalia,
bread and raw food to be cooked, a priest
and several seminarians in attendance, and
wagon and mules, blankets and mattresses.
The seminarians would spread their mat-
tresses at night on the floor, and cover their
tired bodies with the blankets. Rising at a
fixed hour, after the direction of their minds
to God, they would shake out of doors their
blankets and bedding, fold them, sweep up
every particle of dust, wash and attire them-
selves, have regular meditation and morning
prayer, sing High Mass at 8 o'clock, hear a
sermon, breakfast under the trees at 9:30,
go out among the country people, and re-
turn at 3:00, when dinner would be served.
Services and a sermon to the people at 3 145 ;
recreation from 5 to 6; a little spiritual
reading; supper about 6:30 under the trees j
big service of prayer, hymns, and sermons at
8:15; after services, talks with the people;
night prayers about 9:30; then silence and
bed. All this for two weeks at a time, with
coarse but abundant food. The seminarians
34
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
from the regular seminaries, as a rule,
highly edified the people by their devout cat-
echetical instructions.
To the pen of Reverend William B. Han-
non of Asheville, North Carolina, we are
indebted for the following vivid impressions
of a visit to Nazareth:
I always found a charm in visiting Father Price
at Nazareth. The place, built on an eminence,
gave one a sense of expanse on coming out of the
fenland of most parts of eastern North Carolina.
One could see quite a distance and behold the sky
and clouds from horizon to horizon. There was
something reposeful about the whole establish-
ment.
It was a bright day in late spring when I ac-
companied Father Price and two of his students
to open a week's mission to non-Catholics, at a
little mission church in Wake County. Large
fleecy clouds floated in a blue sky, but the sun
was warm. I had been spending a few days at
Nazareth, and gladly consented to join in the
good work. Some beds and household effects were
placed in a farm w^agon, and the two priests and
35
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
two students took their seats and set out for the
place of rendezvous.
The road was full of ruts, and the passengers
received many a jolt on the way. We passed
colored settlements, then quite new and curious in
my eyes. The large farm horse went by fits and
starts, creeping along at times at a snaiFs pace,
and then galloping as fast as his cumbersome load
would allow. It was a fairly picturesque route,
past pine woods, where doves cooed lazily among
the trees, and many plantations of white folks,
who placidly gazed at " Priest Price " and his
luggage and companions, or looked with wonder
and suspicion on the advent of the Catholic folk
of Nazareth, invading the undisturbed territory
of their Protestant creed, whose conflicting and
unsightly churches were seen in all directions. I
do not know where such ugly churches are to be
found as in the solid Protestant South, except in
Wales.
We saluted the people as we passed, and some
jerked back a nod of recognition over their
shoulders, as if making an effort to return the
salutation. The people are well schooled against
Catholicism by their spiritual teachers, who revel
in all the old exploded scandals and lies concerning
36
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
the Church. It is easy to see the glint of dislike
on their faces when they know that one is a Cath-
olic or a priest. The Southern States are still the
happy hunting grounds of illiteracy and preju-
dice.
I was rather disappointed on seeing the mis-
sion chapel or shack, called very appropriately
after St. Teresa, who had to put up with such
crude structures in her new reform establishments.
It presented an interior of confusion, not having
been used for months, but it soon changed its
appearance. The mattresses were duly laid on
the sacristy floor, where we were to sleep, and the
novelty was pleasing to us. As for Father Price,
he was unconscious of any difference, and was
quite as at home in the poorest hut in the back-
woods as in the most agreeable city home. One
of the students, now a Superior in a religious
order, went out to the natives, who were viewing
from afar the invasion, and bargained with them
for milk and other sundries, and so broke the ice.
Father Price, with his truly devotional spirit,
was full of the fire of prayer and zeal, but it was
a barren soil for converts. However, its spiritual
distress was an appealing plea to his apostolic heart.
I noticed during my sermon that men and women
37
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
were continually spitting, and felt hurt at the
profanity in a Catholic church, even in this poor
shack.
My memories of that mission are half pleasant,
half pathetic. That the large attendance was
untouched, like many millions in the Sunny South,
was the sad feature of Catholic failure to reach
these people. They go through life in the old
circumscribed familiar ways, knowing little of
the Church of God, and, in fact, ignorant of the
fundamental truths of Christianity; passing from
youth to old age, and from the death-bed to the
graveyard, missing so much certain hope that the
Church gives the peasantry elsewhere. Such has
been Catholic endeavor for generations. Even
the great heart of Bishop England had to feel
the same trial after all the torrents of his fervid
eloquence, his poverty, his self-sacrifice, and the
clouds of suspicion in which his open, generous
nature had to be enveloped. It is recorded that
this holy and gifted man made few converts in
his day.
The following incident shows another
phase of Father Price's work.
38
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
A negro, Henry Spivy, was tried and con-
victed at Elizabethtown, Bladen County,
on the charge of arson and murder. He
was carried to the State prison of Raleigh
for safe keeping pending his appeal to the
Supreme Court. Visiting the prison, as was
Father Price's custom, he met the condemned
man. The higher court refused a new trial,
and Spivy was carried back to his home
county, accompanied by Father Price, who
stopped at Lumberton to interview the con-
demned man's lawyers in the hope of secur-
ing a short postponement of the hanging in
order that he might give further religious
instructions to the negro.
Father Price hired a horse and buggy and
drove thirty miles to Elizabethtown in order
to be with Spivy on the day appointed for the
hanging. On the day originally appointed
for the execution, thousands of people had
assembled to witness this, the last public
hanging in North Carolina. When the an-
nouncement was made of the postponement
the people were in an ugly mood. Blame
39
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
was charged to the Catholic priest present.
Father Price appeared in the midst of the
disappointed assemblage, confirmed the
rumor that the hanging had been put off, and
invited all to go with him to the Court
House to hear a talk given by a Catholic
priest. People packed the court-room, and
his hearers expressed their admiration for
the missioner and the impression made on
them by his talk. After the labors of the
day Father Price drove back the thirty
miles to Lumberton.
A week later Father Price again made the
difficult trip. On the night before the execu-
tion he requested that he be locked in
.the cell with the prisoner. This was done.
It was noted by the jailers that while the
negro spent his last night on earth in sound
sleep, the other occupant of the cell passed
the long hours in prayer. The next morning
Father Price used a box as an altar, celebrated
Mass, and gave Spivy Holy Communion.
Spivy's was the last public legal hanging in
North Carolina.
40
FATHER PRICE IN HIS NORTH
CAROLINA DAYS
NORTH CAROLINA MISSION
It is no matter for wonder that all who
were associated with Father Price, this truly-
apostolic and saintly man, loved him, and
with his ardent zeal stirring their hearts
strove hard for their own spiritual develop-
ment and the glory of God.
As time went on, however, it became grad-
ually evident that, despite all the means,
natural and supernatural, taken to assure its
success, the Apostolate was not destined to
be permanent. Bitter as this realization must
have been to the zealous apostle, meaning,
as it then seemed, the ruin of his projected
life-work, the blow was nevertheless ac-
cepted with the most perfect resignation, and
Father Price's natural sweetness of temper
and his infectious cheerfulness seemed in no
degree affected. He had begun the work
thinking it to be God's will. He regarded
its apparent failure, despite his best efforts
and prayers, as a manifestation of God's
will^ and, while his apostolic heart bled for
the countless souls that he had hoped to
reach through the Apostolate, he was
41
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
wholly resigned to the inscrutable designs of
Providence.
Several reasons conspired to defeat Father
Price's plan of a religious order for the
South, but we may say, in a word, that he
was so overwhelmed with the labor of build-
ing and money-getting that he could not give
to the rising Society the minute attention it
demanded. His labors were gigantic, since
he had to be superior, builder, money-getter,
editor, and missioner, all in one. Then,
too, in his ardent zeal he wanted big results
quickly. Had he gone more slowly and
deliberately, and been satisfied with less prog-
ress at first, his success might have been
greater. These, however, are merely natu-
ral reasons for what then appeared the
failure of one of Father Price's projects.
None of his works should be judged according
to human standards, but by divine. Regarded
thus, they were not failures, but only the
means whereby the soul of our apostle was
being prepared and strengthened, by experi-
ence and grace, for still greater things.
42
Ill
MARYKNOLL APOSTOLATE
Ill
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
iw^HILE at the Eucharistic Congress
vL/ in Montreal, in September, 1910,
Father Price met his future associate,
Father Walsh, then Archdiocesan Director,
in Boston, of the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Faith. Each was deeply
interested in apostolic work, each had heard
of and was eager to meet the other. It
was the special grace of God that brought both
together at the Eucharistic Congress.
When two souls animated by the same spirit
and purpose come together, it is to be ex-
pected that they should desire and plan to
join forces. Such was the decision of these
two apostolic workers, and then and there
was conceived the idea of supplying what
they considered America's greatest spiritual
need, a national foreign mission seminary,
which would not only take away our reproach
45
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
among the nations — that we were a people
ignoring apostolic obligation — but would
also, as in the case of Holland, react spirit-
ually in stimulating needed vocations for
religious work at home.
The following May, encouraged and au-
thorized by the unanimous approbation of the
American hierarchy in response to a letter
sent out by Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore,
Father Price went with Father Walsh to
Rome, to secure approval for the new work.
This approval was granted on June 29, the
Feast of Saints Peter and Paul j and the fol-
lowing day the Holy Father, Pius X, received
Father Price and Father Walsh in private
audience, at the close of which His Holiness
blessed the work and its organizers.
A few days later Father Price left Rome
for Lourdes, the spot on earth that he desired
most to visit, because of his intense love for
the Immaculate Conception and for her little
protegee, Bernadette Soubirous. He stayed
with the brother of Bernadette, visited the
convent where she had lived and died, was
46
MARTKNOLL APOSTOLATE
favored with the gift of some treasured sou-
venirs, and established a warm friendship
with her relatives that endured until death.
Up to this time Father Price had continued
as owner and editor of Truth. Father Walsh
had also been publishing The Field Afar, 2l
bi-monthly magazine devoted to apostolic
work in pagan lands. As the purpose of the
new national Seminary was exclusively for-
eign mission, it was now considered unfeasible
either to continue each separately, or to merge
the two magazines, and Father Price accord-
ingly severed his connection with Truth, put-
ting it into the hands of persons who, he
judged, would carry it on in accord with his
ideals.
In December, 1 9 1 1 , Father Price went with
Father Walsh to the home of the Domin-
ican Fathers at Hawthorne, New York, and,
making this his headquarters, entered ener-
getically upon the second and more immediate
step in founding the foreign mission seminary
— the launching of a campaign of propaganda
to arouse vocations and to secure financial sup-
47
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
port for the training and maintenance of mis-
sioners. While Father Walsh, chosen Supe-
rior of the Seminary, remained in Hawthorne,
and later in Ossining, New York, to direct
the correspondence and to supervise the
rapidly growing institution. Father Price cov-
ered practically every diocese in the East,
speaking in churches, convents, seminaries,
colleges, schools, hospitals, wherever he could
find the opportunity, to picture the appalling
conditions in pagan lands, to request prayers,
to encourage vocations, to find friends for the
new work.
His wide acquaintance, developed on prop-
aganda for the North Carolina mission, and
the high regard in which he was held by his
many friends among the clergy and laity of
the country, were invaluable to the new work
in winning friends and help in its early and
critical stage. May we not ascribe to the labors
and zeal of Father Price no inconsiderable
share in the rapid growth of MaryknoU — a
development all the more remarkable by
reason of its occurring at a time when the
48
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
Great War dealt severely with unrelated
projects?*
As the intervals between propaganda trips
became longer, Father Price was more con-
stantly associated with the Seminary work as
Spiritual Director of the students. Here his
influence was particularly happy. The stu-
dents, realizing his ardent though unpreten-
tious sanctity, could not but admire and aspire
to such zeal as had kept aflame his mis-
sion enthusiasm during his long and trying
career in the South and that now prompted
him to go to pagan lands to spend and be
spent for Christ. His unfailing good humor
communicated itself to all hearts, making
light the unmistakable hardships of Mary-
knolPs early days. His influence helped to
crystallize one of the most impressive and
* when Father Price left for China, in September,
1 91 8, the Maryknoll institution counted seventeen or-
dained priests, seventy-five students for the priesthood,
ten auxiliary brothers and thirty sisters, while substantial
accommodation for all had been provided at the Mary-
knoll center in Ossining, New York, and at the Prepara-
tory College in Clarks Summit, a suburb of Scranton,
Pennsylvania.
49
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
precious traits of the " Maryknoll spirit," a
heaven-sent cheerfulness that makes every
yoke sweet and every burden light when borne
for the love of God and man.
Being thus an edification to all, particularly
to his penitents, whom he directed with an
eye ever keen to perceive and follow God's
designs — as they now so gratefully testify
— Father Price might have been considered
settled in the final work of a busy life. But
God seemed to have further plans for an in-
strument so useful, for he was destined to
become a vital factor in giving to the actual
workers in the mission field the direction, the
spirit, and the tradition that have already
reaped a glorious spiritual harvest and won
encomiums of praise from other and more
seasoned missioners.
In 191 8 when the Maryknoll Seminary
Council decided to send four priests to the
mission. Father Price manifested his desire
to go, in spite of the anticipated difficulties of
climate and language, difficulties that were
serious for one of his age.
50
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
The desire and the zeal to do missionary
work in the field afar, to suffer its privations
and to bear in patience the rigors and hard-
ships that fall to the lot of every missionary
priest and nun, is a thing to be admired in
young men and women ; but when a man who
is fast approaching three-score starts on a
missionary career to a distant country to labor
for the salvation of souls and the alleviation
of the sufferings of a people whose customs,
manners, and habits are strange to him, and
whose climate promises keenest physical suf-
fering, then we can truly say that such a
man is filled with an apostolic zeal that is
almost divine.
On the eighth of September, 191 8, Feast
of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Father Price, in company with three Mary-
knoll priests. Fathers James E. Walsh, Fran-
cis X. Ford, and Bernard F. Meyer, left
MaryknoU for China. Then began the third
period of Father Price's missionary activity.
He was spared to the missioners, his com-
panions, but a little over a year, yet even in
51
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
that short time his presence proved an inval-
uable aid to those pioneers. The Bishop of
Canton and his priests at first felt that a mis-
take had been been made in sending a priest
of Father Price's age, but when they knew
him better they wrote : " His coming was an
inspiration."
For the last chapter in the life of this
saintly and heroic priest, we have the official
report made after his death by Father James
E. Walsh, his successor as Superior of the
Maryknoll Mission in China. Father
Walsh's statement runs as follows:
Having decided to throw himself personally
into actual missionary work, Father Price deter-
mined to leave no stone unturned that could aid
him in becoming a successful missioner and above
all in guiding the destinies of the newly launched
mission. It was with this motive that he included
in his itinerary a trip through some of the mis-
sions of Japan, Korea and Northern China, where
he talked with the bishops and missioners, noted
methods, and picked up ideas in regard to the
work.
52
ST. THOMAS' CHURCH. WILMINGTON,
NORTH CAROLINA
Here Father Price icas baptized, served as an altar-hoy, and was
ordained.
MARTKNOLL JPOSTOLATE
Arriving at Canton in November, after a short
stay at the Cathedral to get the instructions of
Bishop de Guebriant, under whom we were to
work, Father Price with Father Gauthier and his
three confreres went directly to Yeungkong, the
tentative center of the new American Mission,
where all settled down to the humdrum of learn-
ing the Chinese language and picking up notions
about the practical prosecution of mission work.
Yeungkong was leather Price's first and only
mission in China. During the year that God gave
him to spend here, he made several trips to Canton
and Honekono: on business connected with the
mission, but those trips were only a matter of a
few weeks, and all the rest of his time was passed
at Yeungkong.
Father Price was fifty-eight years old when he
came to China. He was evidently beyond the
age when a man can accustom himself to a new
and deleterious climate, and the change was for
him particularly severe for, being a sufferer from
rheumatism, he found that ailment acutely in-
tensified by the extreme humidity of Southern
China. In addition, there is something about the
life and climate of this country that is very wear-
ing on the nerves, and Father Price's nervous
53
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
condition during this time was a matter of alarm
to both himself and his confreres. Perhaps it
was accentuated by his dogged perseverance
in studying the Chinese language, a nerve-racking
performance at best, and a task that becomes
almost superhuman for a man of his age. Noth-
ing could prevail upon him to give it up, nor even
to let up on the severe course he had mapped out
for himself.
During his short career he had little chance to
do any actual mission work, as he was never able
to make himself understood in Chinese, that be-
ing impossible for any one in so short a time.
Yet he went through the regular initiation of the
young novice, going out on the mission trips to
points around Yeungkong, often traveling in the
most primitive conditions, and putting up with
all sorts of hardships with as little concern as the
youngest and strongest of us. Added to that,
even the daily life at Yeungkong was not so pleas-
ant, for everything was rough and cave-man
fashion, and many things that Americans learn to
look upon as necessaries of life were simply not
to be had. Through it all Father Price was his
sereney gentle self y never comflainingy never out
of fatiencey even at times when the others tuere
54
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
frankly dissatisfied. He gave an example that
will long be remembered by those who had the good
fortune to be associated with him at this time.
As to Father Price's private spiritual life, it
was what everyone who ever knew him anywhere
has had the privilege of seeing — one of great
recollection and union with God in prayer, and it
was perhaps intensified by his stay in China. He
saw many things that cried out to his 'z.ealy and
being without the means of doing any fersonal
ivork, or eveny in so short a timey of making any
flans for the extension of the mission^ s activity y he
always turned to his rosary y where he would ask
God for the results he so ardently desired. To
the young priests who were with him, his spirit
of prayer, his gentleness, and his zeal were a con-
stant revelation. They seemed to see some new
evidence of these qualities every day, so as to
make them feel that they had not rightly known
the man before.
It was a curious thing that Father Price was
able to make the impression that he did on the
Chinese. Certainly he was never able to manage
the simplest conversation in Chinese; the most
we ever heard him say were the two sentences,
" How are you? " and " God bless you! " But
55
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
the Chinese with whom he came in contact were
attracted to Father Price. They liked him, and
they said so; it was a known fact at the mission
that Father Price was extremely popular with
them. It is worth mentioning, also, that the
Chinese commonly rej erred to him as " the holy
friest.^' There was a something about him that it
did not need language to convey, and these simple
people felt it.
Father Price had little time or opportunity to
become well acquainted with our French confreres,
but the impression he made upon them was always
good. He did not have sufficient command of
French to permit a real exchange of ideas, but
they got enough from him to realize the char-
acter of the man, and all of them who met him
expressed their conviction that Father Price was
a beautiful character and a man of sanctity far out
of the ordinary. Even the lay people he met here
appreciated him. One Protestant doctor, on be-
ing asked to remember Father Price in his prayers,
said, " No use — he was a saint."
Father Price died at St. Paul's Hospital, Hong-
kong, where he had gone from Yeungkong to be
operated on for appendicitis. The operation was
a clean-cut one, but he did not have sufficient
S6
MART KNOLL JPOSTOLATE
vitality to react. He died September 12, 19 19,
on the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. He
was buried on the following morning at Happy
Valley Cemetery in Hongkong. The grave was
blessed by Bishop Pozzoni, and many priests and
religious were in attendance, among them Fathers
Gauthier and Deswazieres, who represented the
mission of Canton.
No Maryknoller was at the bedside of
Father Price when he died, and none was
present at the obsequies. It could not bej
yet God provided a substitute in the person
of a devoted friend of Maryknoll, Father
Jean Tour of the Paris Seminary, who wrote
these details of the last hours:
MaryknoU-in-China was already founded on
the virtues, the apostolic zeal, and the strenuous
labors of the first missioners you sent out here one
year ago. This is, I think, your anniversary day,
a good and very good day, indeed, the Feast of
the Most Holy Name of Mary. To-day, at pre-
cisely 10:10 A.M., your young Mission has re-
ceived its second consecration and a lasting bless-
ing, by the happy and holy death of the venerable
57
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
and saintly Father Price. What we feared yes-
terday is now a sad reality.
The good Father did not feel well yesterday.
He passed a good night, but at three this morning
awoke feeling unwell again. At seven he asked
for the Last Rites. He told me there was no
hurry, that he could wait for me, but he insisted
upon receiving Holy Viaticum, Extreme Unction,
and the Plenary Indulgence.
Father Lemaire, a missioner of Canton, who
is a convalescent there, yielded to his wish, and
all the Rites were received in the most edifying
manner.
When I arrived at nine, good Father Price gave
me a sweet smile and a hearty handshake. He
spoke very low, but quite intelligibly. I helped
him the best way I could during the hour. His
hands and forehead were cold. Had it not been
for that, we should have felt no anxiety for the
day. He was very quiet and even somewhat hope-
ful. Still, there was no doubt but that he was
sinking. I spoke to him of all things dear to
him: of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, of Our Lady of
Lourdes, of Bernadette, and he was smiling and
giving assent all the while. Then, of Father
Walsh, and of all the beloved Mary kn oilers,
58
MARY KNOLL APOSTOLATE
Maryknoll proper, Scranton, San Francisco,
Yeungkong:. At each name he lifted his head
heavenward and prayed according to the thoughts
and intentions I suggested.
At about nine-thirty, I understood that he was
sinking more speedily. " Dear Father Price, you
will kindly bless your friend, Father Tour, and,
in his person, dear Father Walsh and all beloved
Maryknollers of Maryknoll, Scranton, San Fran-
cisco, and Yeungkong, won't you? "
" Most willingly and from the depth of my
heart," he replied.
" You offer now your sufferings, and even your
life, for the prosperity of your beloved Society, and
you pray and will ever pray that they all may do
the work of God in a truly apostolic spirit, don't
you? "
" Most certainly."
And as I bowed before him by the side of his
bed, he placed his weak hand on my head and
blessed me, making the Sign of the Cross on me and
praying at the same time, as I guessed, the bless-
ing formula.
Up to nine-forty-five he repeated all the ejacula-
tions after me, but his tongue was no more free.
Until then he always gently smiled at the Holy
59
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
Names and the names of Maryknoll. I started the
prayers for the Commendation of the Soul, in
English, which he seemed to follow throughout.
When these prayers were over, he could see no
more. Then he felt very distressing pain in his
wound and moved pitifully to the right and to the
left a dozen times, while his breath was more and
more hard and scarce. At ten, he opened wide and
wild eyes and was shaken most painfully. The
good Sister on one side and I on the other helped
him the best we could, holding his hand until he
breathed his last quite peacefully, after some five
minutes' rest.
I had the sad privilege of closing the eyes of
your venerable friend and devoted co-operator in
the great work of Maryknoll. I felt that I was
representing you all, and I could not stop my tears.
I can assure you that his death was in the very
truth the death of a just man, and even of a saint.
His last words were: " Tell Father Walsh my last
thoughts were for them all, and that I died in the
love of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and of Maryknoll."
More than one has seen in his death a re-
semblance to that of St. Francis Xavier. In
60
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
some ways it was very dissimilar. The Saint
died on the opposite shores, of Sancian Island,
amid the most primitive surroundings, while
Father Price died in a modern hospital, sur-
rounded by several priests and religious.
But primitive or modern surroundings do
not make much difference when it is a ques-
tion of dying, and Father Price, like Saint
Francis, died far from his homeland, his
kith and kin, his friends, laying down his
life in the strange country that he had come
to evangelize. His memor3/ will be held in
benediction, and his prayers from Heaven
will help to sustain the work that he inaugu-
rated among his brethren who sit in darkness
and the shadow of death.
What an appropriate and long novitiate
Father Price had in his own homeland for
the Chinese mission of his last year on earth!
He accepted whatever God sent, and recog-
nized that he had to plough the furrows and
wait for God to give success or failure. He
never repined, but did his utmost and was
cheerful at small results or none at all.
61
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
His life was unpretentious and far from
the beaten path, unheralded and unrewarded
as far as the world goes. He could not have
begun work in a more disappointing field of
the Church than in North Carolina^ he
could hardly have faced heavier trials than
those that awaited him in China j but that did
not cause him to float feebly upon the Will
of God like a branch that spins around in a
whirlpool. Oftentimes he had abundant
cause to be weary and sad, but he shared
those trying experiences as well as his joys
with God.
His life as a missioner in one of the most
Protestant states in the Union had been one
of innumerable deeds of suffering, resigna-
tion, love, and humility. These grew in
number and sublimity, and the end of his
life in heathen China, as old age came upon
him, is the striking evidence of how beloved
he was in Heaven. He could say in China,
as in North Carolina if the ghostly visitant
had reached him there: " Bonum certamen
certavi, cur sum consummavi, fidem servavi."
62
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
When news of Father Price's death
reached America, Truth (the magazine
which he had founded as the organ of his
work in the South), wrote of him:
A eood man and a brave man and a rare man
left this poor world when Father Price breathed
his last, like Francis Xavier, in far-off China.
Though not possessed of great mental gifts, he
nevertheless accomplished a great work through
sheer zeal and pluck and prayer. His life was
divided into two periods, spent at opposite sides of
the earth.
The first period was taken up with his priestly
labors in North Carolina, and truly they were the
labors of an apostle burning with zeal for the sal-
vation of souls. When he began them, some
forty years ago, the conditions were enough to dis-
courage a veritable Paul. Those conditions con-
sisted of the abysmal ignorance of, and colossal
antipathy towards, Catholicity on the part of North
Carolinians. The life of a priest was then and
there one that called for unusual courage and
strength of character. Laborers in more fruitful
portions of the Lord's Vineyard can hardly realize
the difficulties of priests placed as Father Price
63
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
was. He had, it is true, a little parish, — little in
numbers, but vast in extent, and it was often his
lot to get from town to town or up among the
mountains and into the woods with a pack on his
back, sleeping sometimes by the wayside or in hay-
ricks, begging a meal here and there — sometimes
the meal being refused. Yet the young apostle
stuck to his work, not only manfully, but always
with even cheerfulness. Food, clothing and all
such bodily comforts simply meant nothing to
him.
We owe to his foresight the creation of Truth,
which now numbers among its subscribers over
120,000, dwelling in every State in the Union.
In a way it did take a sort of genius to create all
this. Certainly, it took a rare man to conceive and
carry it through to success. How he did succeed
is a marvel, because he succeeded with nothing.
Disaster in the form of fire that destroyed the plant
erected by long and arduous toil, lack of funds,
criticism — nothing daunted him. Under his
guidance the little magazine leaped into a charac-
teristic place in religious journalism and has ever
been a source of enlightenment to non-Catholics
and of assistance to Catholics. It was rare instinct
that made of him a veritable pioneer in sensing the
64
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
power of the press for defending the Church; all
the more remarkable when we reflect that he had
no traditions in such matters to guide him.
Father Price's yearning for the foreign mis-
sions was born chiefly from a genuine desire to
"go the limit" of apostolic self-sacrifice. Un-
known but to a few special friends, his desire was
to actually lay down his life for the Faith, so that
he prayed for martyrdom. Had he lived in the
early youth of Christianity he would have become a
Sebastian or a Pancratius. Later on he would have
joined a Patrick or a Boniface. As it was, he im-
itated a Francis Xavier. His death over there by
the rising sun is a significant event, for it is the
first of any missioner sent there by a distinctly
American foreign missionary society. Perhaps it
marks, in its humble way, the turn of the world
on its spiritual axis — the turn from West to East.
The history of Christianity — in fact, of civiliza-
tion — has been these three or four thousand years
a steady turning of East to West, from the
Euphrates through Athens to Rome, to Paris, to
London, to New York, to San Francisco. And
now, it perhaps is beginning to retrace its progress,
by crossing the Pacific and touching to life the dor-
mant millions of China.
6s
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
It is not a peevish pessimism of limited view,
but rather the big optimism of a world-wide vision,
that looks with hope to the East as it now contem-
plates the spiritual ruins of civilization in the West.
Our own civilization is tottering under its burden
of materialism. It cannot endure as it is at present.
It has the symptoms of the decay that overcame
Rome in the days of Pompey and the early Caesars.
Then the new life blossomed out again amidst the
virgin soil by the Rhine and the Seine and the
Thames. Centuries later, old Europe received a
new stimulant after Columbus found a yet fresher
soil across the Atlantic. But, now, there is no
more a new soil. Civilization — that is, spiritual
civilization — must return to the old neglected
fields that perhaps lie on the slopes of the Himala-
yas or on the banks of the Yangtse, where the
brutality of modern machinery has not yet clubbed
the spirit of man into servitude. The East calls the
missioner now, as the West called him long ago.
But it is ever the same call. . . . And so, perhaps,
Father Price's going into the dawn, and his death
at the shining portals of the East, may after all
mark in a humble way the beginning of something
new and fresh in the world's history. It may be
as the gentle moving of the early dawn's air, ere
66
MART KNOLL APOSTOLATE
the fresher morning wind sings its matins to the
rising sun. He is not to be mourned. We can
well say of him, as we say of the saints, that his
feast-day is the day of his death. That day of his
has about it all the glory of the morning, and
the promise of new life. — Truth,
67
IV
THE MAN OF GOD
IV
THE MAN OF GOD
XN thinking of Father Price, one always
pictures him far removed from the
noise and strife of the crowd. His struggles
were set in quiet places: he sought his own
soul's sanctification in the prayer and dis-
cipline of solitude, and the salvation of
others in the hills and dales of his North
Carolina mission and later in the remote
mission-fields of China. Maryknoll, situ-
ated as it is on a fine eminence, looking
out upon the stately Hudson, and still
clothed in much of its primeval beauty,
afforded him every opportunity for seclu-
sion, and his was a familiar figure, clothed in
an ancient well-patched cassock, long black
cloak that he had received from the brother
of his beloved Bernadette of Lourdes, and
old soft hat, as, with head and shoulders
bowed and rosary in hand, he strode through
71
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
the compound, clambering over stone walls
until he was finally lost in the wooded
groves. Thence he emerged hours later: and
the supreme joy on his countenance, and the
tell-tale stains on his cassock, of which he
was unconscious, revealed the secret of the
precious time spent on his knees in heavenly
communion with Jesus and Mary, whose
knight he was.
Father Price was strongly, almost rug-
gedly, built and of robust health, except for
severe attacks of rheumatism, contracted,
doubtless, from exposure to all kinds of
weather and lack of proper food while in the
Carolina mission. He was heard to say that
he had more than once slept in open fields
or in barns, when other shelter had been re-
fused him by the natives. In the Life of
Madame Rose Lummisy herself an apostle
of the South, we read:
He went from town to town, preaching in the
market-place and being plied with questions, which
he desired, but often with cabbages and worse,
which he did not desire, before he won a hearing
THE MAN OF GOD
on the claims of the Catholic Church. Undaunted,
he continued his way. He slept anywhere and
everywhere, ate what he got, and went about dis-
tributing literature broadcast. The seed fell here
and there ; his ambition for souls was boundless.
Ordinarily quick and somewhat nervous in
action, he was slow and deliberate in every-
thing pertaining to serious problems and re-
ligious matters. His kind blue eyes — often
lighted with a merry twinkle, for he had a
keen, delightful sense of humor — his genial
winning smile, and his evident gentleness,
made him so approachable that even strangers
speedily felt at ease with him. This accessi-
bility was strengthened by his manner. No
matter how preoccupied he was, he would
drop everything, with no appearance of re-
luctance, to hear whatever one had to say,
giving his attention with such sympathy and
understanding that very often the mere re-
cital of a difficulty would seem to solve it.
Wide experience, rare discernment, and
excellent judgment, combined with natural
charm, made Father Price a welcome addi-
73
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
tion to any circle. His fund of anecdotes,
both serious and amusing, seemed inexhaust-
ible, and there was hardly a topic that he
could not illustrate most entertainingly from
his own experience. Father Tabb, the blind
poet-priest of St. Charles' College, and Abbe
Magnien of St. Mary's Seminary, were
frequently the subjects of such stories j but
no tales were more delightful than those,
related in his rich Southern drawl, of the
" po' whites " and the negroes among whom
he had labored.
Father Price was universally beloved. He
was full of tenderness and loving kindness
for all the frail beings of the world, and
even some most rigorous Protestants admired
his truly Catholic charity and became his sin-
cere friends. He had sufficient breadth of
mind to empty himself and become all in all
to the poor backward Southern white man,
and at the same time learning and manners
enough not to be despised by the polished
Southern gentlemen. A priest who worked
with him in the South declares that " the two
74
THE MAN OF GOD
classes are poles apart, and Father Price
could face either pole perfectly. He was
always fersona grata to the Southern gentry.
There was nothing crude about him, although
he was perfectly unconscious of the quality
of his food and clothing and quite at home
in the poorest and roughest surroundings."
He was not long engaged in the ministry
when his ability as a missioner was recog-
nized, and he was called upon for difficult
missions, until finally he was allowed by the
bishop to devote himself to the conversion
of his Southern non-Catholic countrymen.
He quietly exerted an influence upon the
most illiterate and prejudiced: he was verily
a good shepherd to the lost and sinful ones:
and he thought no soul for whom Christ
died outside the range of his pastoral care.
He was never so cramped and selfish as to
think that his work was within the confines
of a particular territory, and that souls else-
where had no claim on him: his zeal was
truly Catholic, not parochial. He looked to
souls, and, like the celebrated Father of the
75
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
Church, reckoned one soul worthy the min-
istry of a bishop. He would preach to two
colored children as earnestly as if they were
a whole congregation: and he counted it
nothing to go twenty miles across the moun-
tains to receive into the Church a single
convert.
Humility, practiced in an heroic degree,
was an outstanding trait of Father Price's
character. He was forever preaching it, and
he lived according to his precepts. Con-
vinced that it is the very foundation of the
spiritual life. Father Price tried to impress
upon the students the great principle that
without humility everything is founded on
quicksand. At every spiritual reading which
he conducted when at Maryknoll he endeav-
ored to inculcate in the students some of his
own regard for this virtue.* He seldom
spoke of himself, or of his work in North
Carolina, beyond narrating some humorous
incident, and he disliked very much having
* In doing this, he made constant use of the Exer-
cises of St. Ignatius, and in particular of the teachings
76
THE MAN OF GOD
anyone else mention it. He absolutely for-
bade Father Walsh to put his name in The
Field Afat'y or to make any reference to him
— much to the bewilderment of his many
friends, who would occasionally inquire about
his " disappearance." He would never con-
sent to having his picture taken, even in a
group, but in spite of this an occasional
" snap " was secured by cleverly aimed cam-
eras. (Fortunately, he waived this ironclad
rule before leaving for China, and some
pictures taken at that time show him in a char-
acteristic mood.) He always tried to take the
last place at table and to be the last in leaving
a room. He took care of his own room, mak-
ing the bed and sweeping and dusting. He
was indifferent to his clothing, which was
frequently " hand-me-downs " from some
on humility of the great Jesuit. In his younger days,
Father Price had desired to be a Jesuit, and for some
time was faced with the choice of missionary work
among the non-Catholics of North Carolina, or of be-
coming a Jesuit religious. On the advice of his con-
fessor he had definitely given up the latter idea, but he
always had a strong admiration for the famous Order
and the spiritual advice of its saintly founder.
77
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
of his former classmates, and to his food
with one exception: he refused to eat apples
in any form. Why? Because they were the
forbidden fruit of Paradise, and the medium
by which sin was brought into the world.
If Father Price's dress and oddities were
sometimes amusing, if his constant preaching
of humility ever seemed overdrawn, we
must look upon them as foils which show in
greater luster the sterling spirituality of the
man. Whether one takes sanctity as " reg-
ularity, punctuality, and exactness," or
whether it is considered as " being one with
God in thought, in love, and in action,"
Father Price was a man of evident and pre-
eminent holiness, a holiness attained by the
yielding of his body to mortifications and his
soul to the inspirations of the Holy Ghost.
The following incident — and we could give
many others — is related by a priest for
some time associated with Father Price in
his North Carolina mission work:
He called me once in a hurry to hear his edifying
confession, and just as I had given him absolution
78
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, GOLDSBORO,
NORTH CAROLIXA
The first church built by Father Price.
THE MAN OF GOD
he was about to put me playfully out of the room
when a sudden call came by telephone, and he had
to rush to answer it. I hurriedly took in the sur-
roundings of the cell-like room, and pulled the
blanket from the bed where he slept, as it looked
devoid of a mattress. I then saw that he slept on
the bars, which must have pained his side and ribs.
He evidently recollected that he had left me behind
in the room and rushed impetuously back. I ban-
teringly told him that he should be ashamed to do
such violence to his flesh, and he replied that I
should not have satisfied my curiosity by uncover-
ing; the bed. He demanded silence on the subject,
which I now break. I realized that we have not
passed the days of the great saints even in this
worldly age, and felt a hope for the conversion of
pitiful men when choice souls like the poor mis-
sioner of North Carolina prayed and suffered
for them.
At first Father Price was too enthusiastic
in his corporal penances and his health and
strength suffered. On the advice of his
director he later modified these austerities and
sought sanctity in unswerving fidelity to a
rule of life. Whether at work or prayer,
79
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
Father Price showed the same untiring zeal.
On his propaganda tours he worked at top
speed, and in the home nest at Maryknoll,
where he devoted himself chiefly to writing,
his concentration was admirable.
From his rising in the morning until his
retiring at night, Father Price's life seemed
to be one of uninterrupted union with God.
Even in his busiest hours he lived in an " at-
mosphere " of heaven, and whenever the
opportunity offered he would be on his knees
before the little shrine of Our Lady in his
room, or in the chapel before the Blessed
Sacrament. In his absent-mindedness he
forgot things y but never the presence of God.
He always found time for spiritual reading
and recollection, and this without neglecting
the demands of an intensely active aposto-
late. In all seasons, the late hours of the
night and the early dawn found him
wrapped in prayer. At Maryknoll the sac-
ristan often found in the chapel the stump
of a candle that had been burned during the
night; yet at the first sound of the bell
80
THE MAN OF GOD
Father Price would rise again for morning
prayer and meditation. Mass he said very
devoutly, in about thirty-five minutes. It
was his custom to spend considerable time
in making the Mementos. After Mass,
usually said at the Blessed Virgin's altar, he
would make his thanksgiving at the altar and
then follow it with the Stations of the Cross.
During the day he said the Little Office of
the Blessed Virgin, and he strongly urged his
penitents to cultivate the same devotion.
While he talked, or listened, or walked, or
rode, his rosary was present, twined about
his fingers during conversation, or slipping
between them as he told the decades. A
man of prayer, he found real companionship
and genuine spiritual pleasure in the mere
" feel " of his rosary. He must have said
it a dozen times a day. If a visitor opened
the door of his room too quickly after the
cheery, " Come in! " he was likely to sur-
prise Father Price scrambling from his knees
before the little shrine, rosary in hand, and
looking embarrassed at being " caught ".
8i
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
A priest in Jersey City recalls Father
Price's visit to his church one Sunday some
years ago. On that occasion, after hearing
Father Price's mild appeal for Field Afar
subscriptions at the first Mass, this priest be-
came anxious and said to him in the sacristy,
" Father Price, do you depend on your
sermon for your propaganda results? "
Father Price smiled and replied, " Why
do you ask? "
And his friend answered: "I want to see
you make good. But if you don't put more
strength into your appeal your visit here will
be fruitless."
Father Price thanked his host, and told
him that in reality he depended especially on
prayer. And the priest, in telling of the inci-
dent, added, " He took away the largest
sum of money ever gathered by any mis-
sioner visiting our church."
Father Price's greatest spiritual joy was
to honor Our Immaculate Mother, to whom
he rendered a devotion that for its depth and
constancy was remarkable j and inseparable
82
THE MAN OF GOD
from this love, and born of It, was his great
devotion to Bernadette Soubirous, his " little
saint ", the " Lily of Mary ". On the feast
days of either Our Blessed Mother or Berna-
dette, Father Price (who was especially
pleased to be called " Father Bernadette ")
would go off for the day, making a retreat
to some shrine of Mary Immaculate, where
he would spend hours in uninterrupted
prayer. The first seeds of this devotion had
doubtless been planted by his mother, who
had a great love for The Immaculate Concep-
tion j and his escape from drowning, through
her intercession as he believed, as well as his
relief from deafness after a novena in her
honor, surely strengthened it. Gratitude
and love prompted him to do all in his power
to honor Our Blesed Lady and to secure for
her greater reverence and affection in the
hearts of others. The churches that he
erected in North Carolina were named for
her, — the Church of The Immaculate Con-
ceftion at Halifax and St, Mary^s at Golds-
boro. His priests' house was called Regina
83
FATHER PRICE OF MARY KNOLL
Afostolorum: and had his religous order for
the South been successful it would have been
dedicated to her, also. Whenever the Ordo
allowed a votive Mass, Father Price would
invariably read the Mass of The Immaculate
Conception of December 8j and on those
occasions this man, who never wore anything
but the poorest personal clothing, would in-
sist on having the very best vestments in the
Seminary.
We are reminded here of an incident that
occurred on the day of Father Price's de-
parture for China. It was September 8,
feast of Our Lady's nativity, but most of
us were more occupied with the great event
that marked so important a milestone in
Maryknoll's history than with the import of
the feast. Father Price, leader of the mis-
sion band, did not enjoy being the center of
attention. He slipped away and went to the
kitchen to give a sister there some final mes-
sages in regard to his Bernadette literature.
The sisters all urged him to go to the re-
fectory, vainly holding out the prospect of a
84
THE MAN OF GOD
last opportunity to enjoy Southern fried
chicken, which had been especially prepared
for him. Happily, someone remarked: " But
Father, how can you treat Our Lady so on
her birthday? It's really her party, you
know! "
His eyes opened in childlike wonder.
" Why, that's so ! " he exclaimed, and dis-
appeared. And he partook bountifully of
the feast, and never appeared more genial
or more lovable than as Mary's birthday
guest.
From his visit to Lourdes, in 191 1, Father
Price brought away a remarkable devotion to
Blessed Bernadette Soubirous, the " Child of
the Immaculate Conception". That he had
some supernatural experience seems quite
certain, although he w^ould never say more
than this: " Something happened to me at
Lourdes. I can never be the same again."
As soon as he returned to America he bent
his energies to making known this favored
child of Mary, and his appeals for the new
work for foreign missions at Maryknoll went
85
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
hand in hand with the spread of devotion to
Bernadette and to Mary Immaculate, the
Queen of the Apostles. He had always with
him a number of relics of Bernadette, and
on the third finger of his right hand he wore
what was finally ascertained to be her ring.
He had covered it with black leather, and
naturally it was a never-failing source of
wonder and questioning. When asked what
it was. Father Price used to say: "Well,
now, can you keep a secret? "
On being assured of that, he would smil-
ingly remark, " So can I ! " — and there
was an end of it.
His room at Maryknoll was literally filled
with pictures of Bernadette, from large por-
traits on the walls to small prints on his desk
and shelves. On returning from one of his
propaganda trips he was overjoyed to find a
beautiful little imitation of the Lourdes
Grotto set up in one corner of his room —
the work of some Maryknoll confreres.
The beatification of Bernadette gave him
special joy and he celebrated the event by
86
THE MAN OF GOD
having a number of medals designed and
struck in her honor. The last of these, made
just before he left for China, represented
the Blessed Virgin appearing to Bernadette
at Lourdes and telling her to " pray and
work for conversions." Around the rim are
the words: " The Message of the Immacu-
late Conception to every Catholic." On the
obverse is the image of Our Divine Re-
deemer commissioning the Apostles to, " Go,
teach all nations "j and the encircling motto
is: "All nations to Jesus through The Im-
maculate Conception."
Father Price also established the Bureau
of the Immaculate Conception, to promote
devotion to the Blessed Virgin under this
title: and he had planned to start a maga-
zine for this purpose when his approaching
departure for China made it inadvisable.
He prepared in English the only authentic
Life of Bernadette of Lourdes, and produced
several editions over the name of /. H,
Gregory. A smaller life of Bernadette, The
Lily of Maryy also came from his pen. It
87
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
goes without saying that these books sold at
cost, for they were primarily intended to
spread devotion to Bernadette and to The
Immaculate Conception. They met with a
warm welcome and received high praise from
the press.
Much more might be added to the delin-
eation of Father Price's saintly character.
We might enlarge upon his virtues, his zeal,
his extraordinary devotion to Mary Immacu-
late. But this glimpse into the mind and soul
of the man of God will perhaps reveal suf-
ficiently that rare union of the real contem-
plative with the truly active, which was so
strongly marked in him. We are tempted to
say that in a contemplative life Father Price
would have been supremely happy. And
yet, the fruit of his heavenly intercourse was
an ever-increasing thirst for souls, to be won
through his own tireless activity.
The most striking manifestation of his
apostolic zeal came when Father Price at the
age of fifty-eight asked to be assigned with
the first mission band to leave Maryknoll
88
THE MAN OF GOD
for the Orient. If we consider that, in ad-
dition to the obstacles imposed by age, such
a step meant a complete change of life 3 that
it implied the obligation of learning a diffi-
cult language J and that it called for constant
residence in an enervating climate with a
prolonged rainy season that was almost cer-
tain to bring on attacks of rheumatism, —
we have some comprehension of his yearning
for the salvation of immortal souls and of
his forgetfulness of self. The first
band of missioners was made up, with
the exception of Father Price, of inexperi-
enced men but recently ordained, and he
rightly felt that his long experience of
thirty-three years in the priesthood would be
of value in the pioneer days of the China
mission. He became the counselor, consoler,
model, and inspiration of his three compan-
ions, who loved him as a father, and who
today, in the midst of their labors, cherish
the remembrance of his Christ-like charity
and hold his memory in benediction.
Was it a huge mistake for such a man as
89
FATHER PRICE OF MART KNOLL
Father Price to leave a sphere of certain use-
fulness at home for an uncertain work in the
distant mission fields of the Orient? Some
say that it was. But " the Spirit breathes
where it will/' and to follow its call can
never be a mistake. One has only to make
sure, as far as that is possible, that the sum-
mons is from God and not a temptation in
disguise. Father Price acted judiciously,
and gave the question of leaving his life's
work for a new apostolate careful considera-
tion, submitting it to the judgment of holy
and venerable advisei'S.
His new ministry v/as a short one — yet
we know that he " lived a long space in a
short time." He left no interpretation of
his life's work with us: not a word came out
of the silence to show what he himself
thought of it, with its light and shade, as he
lay dying so far away from his own Sunny
South. But what an inspiration, to find the
veteran missioner dying in a foreign and
more fruitful field, after a life of untold and
often fruitless labor in his native state!
90
MARY KNOLL MISSIONERS AT THEIR
ELDER BROTHER'S GRAVE, HAPPY
VALLEY CEMETERY, HOXGKONG
THE MAN OF GOD
Many would have yearned for rest and re-
tirement after such a career: one apostolate
is usually sufficient for even the most pious
and energetic. But Father Price was in the
spring of life at fifty-nine years of age,
ready to encounter hardships fit to over-
whelm the youngest and most fervent levite.
Like the Apostle, he always looked on him-
self as the unprofitable servant and feared
to go before God with empty hands. Mar-
tyrdom was his desired goal, and the subject
of years of prayer. He found it, not as he
sought it, but in the mysterious way de-
signed by Providence. Death itself had no
power to distress him, save in the thought
of pagan souls untaught, and when it came
to him in a foreign land it found him ready
to go " home ", there to continue his apos-
tolate through the Communion of Saints.
91
^r{
OTHER MARYKNOLL PUBLICATIONS
Maryknoll-At-Ten
A pamphlet history of the Catholic Foreign
Mission Society of America.
Field Afar Stories, Vol. I
Field Afar Stories, Vol. U
Field Afar Stories, Vol. lU
Separate collections of tales bearing on foreign
missions and the foreign-mission vocation.
An American Missionary
Fr. Judge, S.J., in Alaska.
A Modem Martyr
Life and letters of Bl. Theophane Venard.
For the Faith
Just de Bretenieres, martyred in Korea in 1866.
The Martyr of Futuna
Bl. Peter Chanel, S.M., martyred In Oceania in
1839.
In The Homes of Martyrs
Visits to the homes and home folk of fne young
missionary martyrs of the past century.
Observations in the Orient
A survey of Catholic Missions in the Far East
— chiefly China and Japan.
The Field Afar
Monthly magazine of the Catholic Foreign Mission
Society.
The Maryknoll Junior
Monthly for boys and girls.
For further information, address
THE CATHOLIC FOREIGN MISSION SOCIETY
OF AMERICA
MARYKNOLL : : : NEW YORK
93
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